B3 Chapter 286: Wealth of Growth, pt. 3

Under the curious eyes of his companions, Kaius finally delved into the offerings of his latest skill.

Sigil of Vesryn’s Pact—a skill so different from the spellcasting glyphs he already possessed. As soon as he saw it, he knew he had to have it. Even if it provided him no personal benefits in its current form, his brother’s strength was his own, and he would happily sacrifice a skill to ensure Porkchop’s safety.

Kaius also doubted that he had—the skill’s epigraph had mentioned freely shared power eventually being returned in kind, and he suspected that even without the skill evolving, later tiers would come with functionality that empowered him directly.

He was getting ahead of himself, and his curiosity was burning hotter by the second besides.

Focusing fully on the words that floated in his vision, he delved into the options that waited for him.

**Ding! Glyphic Body Formation available for selection – Sigil of Vesryn’s Pact!**

Leap of the Untethered:

Glyphic Body Formation – Tier I

Affinity: Force

Glyph: Sigil of Vesryn’s Pact

Selection Available!

This Body Formation improves the inscriber’s bonded companion’s ability to leap by reinforcing their movements with small bursts of explosive force. Using this ability requires 5 Stamina per second.

…

Soul Subverts the World:

Glyphic Body Formation – Tier I

Affinity: Space

Glyph: Sigil of Vesryn’s Pact

Selection Available!

This Body Formation allows the inscriber and their bonded companion to channel 1000 mana to swap places when within 100 long-strides of each other.

…

Unbroken Through Suffering:

Glyphic Body Formation – Tier I

Affinity: Soul, Life

Glyph: Sigil of Vesryn’s Pact

Selection Available!

This Body Formation grants the inscriber’s bonded companion a small fraction of their resistances to afflictions and affinities.

…

Wild Spirit:

Glyphic Body Formation – Tier I

Affinity: Nature

Glyph: Sigil of Vesryn’s Pact

Selection Available!

This Body Formation infuses the inscriber’s bonded companion with a slight connection to nature, faintly warning them of incoming and hidden challenges.

His surroundings faded from Kaius’s notice as he stared at the offered formations, the flickering brazier light becoming little more than a muted glow in the corner of his eyes.

While he’d known that the skill would be odd, what he saw in front of him was outside of his expectations.

Traditionally, body formations were nebulous things—minor passive enhancements, or channelled abilities. Except for the weakest effects, they always had a cost—either leeching some form of resource regeneration while active, or requiring active expenditure to use. Niche as they were rare, it was only very occasionally that you saw someone who had invested so heavily in them as to make it a focus of their class—really, only a small selection of runewrights and their closest retainers.

The ones he saw before him were different. For one, they were stronger than what he remembered of the little he knew of body formations. Sure, he might be limited to picking a single enhancement per tier of the skill, but these were permanent enhancements—ones that would exist in excess of Porkchop’s already substantial class and general skills.

As a flicker of uncertainty entered his chest, Kaius reopened the description of Vesryn’s Pact, narrowing in on how it scaled.

‘Each level moderately increases the potency of inscribed formations, new and existing.’

He ogled the words that flew entirely in the face of standard understandings of formations.

Almost all rune skills improved the arrays and inscriptions one could produce, but they almost never affected what had already been created—with one exception, formations that were bound directly to their creator, something almost exclusively seen in body formations and his own spell-glyphs.

And yet here was something that blurred those lines. Sure, it likely rested entirely on the depth of his soul-bond with his brother, but it was still a shock. At first, he’d assumed that he’d misunderstood the wording in some way that would become clear when he saw the formations themselves.

A scaling increase to Porkchop’s strength—not just in direct power, but an expansion of his capabilities.

He grinned, pleased he had taken the leap on the skill.

As for the formations themselves? They all seemed useful, but more than that, they were oddly familiar.

“This is ridiculous,” he muttered.